You can’t argue with crazy

You can’t argue with crazy, and yet I try to. I try to be right – it’s amazing how important that is to me.

I had an interaction with a crazy parent at work last week, and I’m up early processing it this morning. I don’t like that I’m up at 3am, but I’m trying not to judge myself. I often process this way, but on this particular topic I feel like crazy is winning.

What being up at 3am has helped me see is that I have some old energy that’s stuck in situations like this. In my old school, I had a lot of run-ins with this sort of dynamic – so much so that I earned a unenviable nickname from my closest colleagues. “Lighting Rod” is what they called me – for every bolt of craziness I got zapped with was one less they had to potentially encounter from the same source.

The way that I operated was I would choose to interact with this level of craziness, fearing that others would give credit to the crazy side of the argument. I felt that other side might be deemed credible by my unpredictable bosses. In order to protect myself I thought I had to go into the belly of this crazy-go-nuts beast in order to emerge as Right, or justified. I did something different this time, and it was so unfamiliar that even though I’m reassured I did the right thing, I don’t believe it. I don’t trust the new approach yet.

Engaging with crazy is itself an act of craziness. Someone I think is really wise once told me that in the face of crazy, “No” is a complete sentence. I am not a familiar practitioner of the one-word sentence yet. It might be a while before I get there. You see, I still want to be Right! And, to be honest, I think I also want the craziness to know that I’m Right, too. Man, who do I think I am?